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Annual parish meeting - 14 May 2008
Was the high turnout at the annual meeting of the Parish Council because of the air traffic control changes which are threatening the village with the noisiest skies since the helicopters went over earlier in the day? Or was it the presentation of the responses to the survey for the Parish Plan? Perhaps it was going to be the flood in the road every time we have a shower of rain. It was, in reality, none of these - it was the threatened removal of the phone box and it allowed the democratic process to kick into action for the first time for a while with an exciting public vote.
David Risk (pictured below with Mark Hounsell) dealt with the flooding in The Street at the start of the meeting. We were told of work to be done to clear a drain in The Cottage which should solve the problem – assuming the blockage is there. Let’s hope the engineers are right as water has a tendency to show itself a long way from any blockage.
The biggest crime wave to hit Brandeston in the last year, we were told by Mary Thompson, our police Community Support Officer, comprised the morning and evening flows of 4x4s speeding in The Street to and from the school. That aside, we were a crime-free area - although the parish plan survey suggested that there was some vandalism.
Nick Hayward’s presentation of the responses to the survey showed some interesting facts. The preliminary analysis showed that we use cars to travel and that a lot of us are over 50. It suggested that Mutton Lane is less tidy than any other part of the village and that any new homes should be built elsewhere, preferably London, according to one respondent. In summary, the consensus seemed to be that Brandeston should remain more or less as it is now.
And so to the phone box: BT intends to remove it because it is not used and anyone who needs to use it would have to have a credit card as it no longer takes coins. People thought that the old red phone box would have been more in keeping with the village - but of course it would still not be used.
The days of most phone boxes were numbered when every home installed a phone (which 108 people thought worked really well). Then mobiles came along (which don’t work well in Brandeston) and village phone boxes were all but dead (Brandeston people are generally in good health) and buried (the survey had no questions on the village’s graveyards). It seems that our phone box serves just one useful purpose in the village (charming and a friendly place to live but lacks a house of ill repute) – it allows John King to tell his guests exactly where his house is. The meeting didn’t think that this was a good enough reason to keep the phone box and so the Parish Council (efficient and manage the village well) will not oppose its removal.
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